The $46 Windows XP Gaming PC

In this video, I built a pretty competent Windows XP computer with a Dell Precision 390 I got at a thrift store for $13.
Full hardware specs:
SYSTEM: DELL Precision 390
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
RAM: 2GB DDR2 ECC @667MHz
GPU: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 275
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============MUSIC==============
VECTOR GRAPHICS - DESTINE: • VECTOR GRAPHICS - DESTINE
ESPRIT 空想 - CRUISER - • ESPRIT 空想 - CRUISER
dj pwndu - rce soundcloud.com/pwndu/rce?si=7...
YUNG BAE - Tropical Hysteria: • YUNG BAE - Tropical Hy...
Jake Chudnow - Moon Men (Instrumental): • Jake Chudnow - Moon Me...

[@electro6176]

Windows XP >> Windows 11

[@turkey_sandwhich]

true

[@EliteZekrom]

Windows 7 Is Where It's At.

[@lilsoonerfaninmo]

*Windows 10.1

[@deathbydeviceable]

​@@lilsoonerfaninmo*Symbian OS

[@iXx4L]

@@EliteZekromif I had a list of best windows versions it would go like this 7 XP 8.1 10 Vista 8 11

[@stevenchristenson2428]

The nvidia quatro card connector is for a special cable that splits it into 2 DVI ports. Dell used these back in the day. I have a ATI card that has that same connector and even the cable that breaks it out into 2 DVI connectors laying around somewhere in my retro shit.

[@Jayce762]

Yep old DMS 59

[@chriszampella5449]

It's a Molex video connector. Same company that makes the Molex power connector

[@IanThatMetalBassist]

You can also get a cable that breaks out into dual VGA

[@Ravensfan-qx5pc]

Yup, I have a few of that exact same card and few of the those "splitter" cables in my pile of retro crap somewhere too. They existed to SFF machines a dual screen setup. In an ancient time when having 2 flat screens was still more of a luxury than the norm. Beyond that, those cards are garbage lol

[@shahriar_wayne]

you're that KZbinr i longed to find. good contents 10/10

[@LOSSLESSOFFICIAL]

Seeing you play Counter-Strike on Windows XP just hit me straight in the balls with nostalgia.... made me really sad actually. Nostalgia is so bittersweet because it's amazing to see how far we've come thus far in our lifetime but you also have this pit in your stomach missing those days where we got to see the BIRTH of the computers, the internet, and video games and everything was groundbreaking and innovative. I remember feeling euphoria and genuine JOY back then... and now it's very hard to feel that. We've hit a peak now where everything is either an improvement on what we already had or incremental updates. I started playing Counter-Strike in the early Beta versions before it became a retail game when it was still just a Half-life mod. For me personally, I still played it after retail and the release of The Orange Box... but quit the whole scene when CS:GO came out. Which is crazy because I used to be HEAVILY into it and my CS clan even placed 16th place in the CPL tournament in Texas back in the day. I literally had times where I didn't sleep for 2 days straight practicing with my friends all night. One I knew in real life and the rest were friends I only knew online. I'd stay up all night, go to school, come home and play again and not sleep again. I would start hallucinating I was so tired It was so unhealthy but some of the best memories I have.

[@lucasrem]

nostalgia, muhahahaha, Contertrike Dejavu, why on Xp ? Why not install Windows 10 x64

[@suhasghosal9275]

bro i can feel you, ive been throught the same. you should try the current game once.

[@ogeyrat]

Nostalgia? nothing nostalgic about playing CS2 nowadays with Steam ruining CSGO with this update. Full blown aimbots, wallhacks and script kiddies in the whole game.

[@kinein]

What was the name of your CPL team?

[@waifuracer6516]

I am shocked how under subscribed this channel is. Keep going bro!! Love your musical taste, and your editing is so fucking good. Binge watch worthy. Looking forward for you future uploads!

[@CakePrincessCelestia]

This pretty much was a tiny channel that noone knew until he dropped the 56k in 2023 video, which almost hit 200k views as of now. The quality, however, speaks for itself and I can easily see the channel grow from now on.

[@ttj_]

fr the music is so good, just great overall

[@depzaivodichthienha]

shut up weeb

[@enilenis]

Had a stack of about 8 of these. Inherited them from work. They used to be all running different license servers with a few redundant boxes on standby. It was quicker to not fix a dead server, but to pull the whole workstation out. Replace it with a clone, and get back to work, while the old host is being investigated. We had them stacked 4 machines high. Like a stone age render farm. The cases were nice and solid. We build furniture out of them, upon which we could sit, set up laptops and monitors. They lasted over a decade, being plugged in and running pretty much 100% of the time. Only mechanical hard drives failed due to standard wear, but the power supplies all held up. No bad caps, even though some bulged a bit towards the end. At this point, PC's from the XP era all need recapping. They've all dried up. I have one mobo with a Dallas clock from the Pentium days. Bet it's dead. Sealing a coin cell in resin with a timer chip, is like welding a car's gas tank shut.

[@blackterminal]

I have a old Commdore PC with one of those chips. I cut into it and wired a coin cell holder. Though sadly I have not tried to turn it on for years.

[@enilenis]

​@@blackterminal Hehe. I have a monster dual machine that I built on an Asus CUV4X-DLS with 2x 1.4GHz Tualatins on Korean socket adapters. Since the motherboard is not pin-compatible originally, I wasn't sure if it was going to work. On some forums I read about people running Tualatins fine, but there were few, where they said the board fried. So, I never had enough courage to actually turn it on. It sits assembled, waiting for the day when all of my other retro boxes are dead, and I have no option, but to finally flip the switch.

[@blackterminal]

@@enilenis LOL your funny. You and me would get on.

[@DienerNoUta]

Is that astolfo in you desk? Man of culture

[@ricardovega3225]

0:38 golden. smashed the like button right after

[@ILostMyOreos]

This was really cool! I love retro computing

[@retrokvlt]

I got one of these from e-waste bin at work. Glad to see someone else with one. They are fantastic. Mine will eventually be set up for FireWire Audio and old DAW/Music software. Something a little different than the retro gaming stuff.

[@cozymistbreeze]

crazy that you have under 500 subs, really good video :) i hope you make more in the future

[@francoisleveille409]

Legacy Update is a wonder tool to have for older systems. I too was an avid user of NT4 and XP. Still have my original NT4 Workstation CD.

[@CakePrincessCelestia]

Great tool that I didn't know yet - always used WSUS Offline Update. With that you can download all the updates though a portable installer and have them ready on a USB drive for all the Windows versions of your choice. Just run the installer on the machine that needs the updates and it will go though the whole process automagically, including the reboots. Always loved that thing even while having an internet connection, simply because I didn't have to rely on the utterly slow Microsoft servers that would take ages to serve me a bunch of updates and wait for all the hundreds of thousands of update search processes in a row anymore.

[@adamtajhassam9188]

hoping he puts a ssd instead w support instead of a HDD lol someday....

[@francoisleveille409]

@@adamtajhassam9188 I just put an SSD in my XP system few days ago. It's the first time I put a drive in this one that's faster than the 15'000 RPM SCSI-wide Seagate HD that was put in it back in 2010. SCSI-UW was indeed way ahead of its time!

[@ChAzR89]

God damn i love this channel. I can't wait what the future brings, keep it up ♥

[@burrfoottopknot]

awesome video, keep at it i really enjoyed this without a doubt very very cool

[@mobius5206]

Astolfo in the background really rounds off the whole video

[@mattmorris857]

So cool bro. Thanks for uploading!

[@kevinsahm5577]

i am running xp now on a pc from 2012 the 64 bit edition and its really nice. I use mini chrome and mypal 68 for web browsing.

[@vilhelmiina.]

should have played the doom 3 on that badboy.. missed opportunity, but still gotta love XP what a legendary os.

[@ozverti6886]

I had that exact Dell system but with a Xeon Dual Core that was hyperthreaded. PSU died and it was a pain sourcing a replacement. The one I found from a seller was broken and they said no refunds. Sat unpowered for years until I finally found one in a salvage system and I took the RAM from it to. Took out the Quadro, threw in a Radeon card and I was living.

[@charlottesimss9853]

Awesome video! I got a 2007 Dimension a few weeks ago with an Athlon 3600+ and a HD 8470 in it and it fucking rocks. I can play pretty much anything at nice settings to my 17" CRT. It's such a fun setup and makes gaming fun for me with how straightforward and iconic the library is from that era.

[@unknownsoldier4156]

Enable PAE if you ever want to goof around with more than 4GB in Windows 32 bit. It certainly will see upwards of 32GB of ram, tested on a Dell Precision T7400!

[@ovatsugrock420]

The first computer i ever used was running on windows xp, i always wanted something like this buy i was a child, watching you actually doing it its awesome man, great video

[@MrShawn305]

How cool, I have a T3400 and an Optiplex 785 I've been wanting to install BF2 on, but the windows updates were an issue for me. I'm gonna try that and see what I get. Was thinking of running XP on the 785 and Windows 7 on the T3400. Something fun about playing with hardware from my childhood before all the RGB and stuff we have now days. Also something fun about running an old ass Windows XP PC maxed out on ram on a SSD and an "old" graphics card

[@beefcrevice]

Pleasant content my guy.

[@jobalisk6649]

I have 3 of the 2007 model of this one working together as a beowulf cluster. 16gb of ram each, duel quadcore xeon processors in each and an old nividia quantum.

[@joelbrandoxo]

dude yes! i had this same PC i got from a friend for like $100 in 2012. i need a budget gaming computer and it definitely served its purpose. i was still running xp back then too!

[@TheSillyDoggo]

my dad had a computer from dell from around 2000 around 7 years ago and it ran windows xp and looked like that. when i got into primary school i was surprised by window 7 (it was 2015 before windows 10)

[@user-xn9jb1kl8f]

what I always do for used or customers pc is .. set mainboard to default 1st .. save & restart .. then check necessary peripherals is on & detected 1 by 1 .. save & restart ..

[@JustAnotherLuke94]

So dudes computer says 2:00 AM and he is up making us some FIRE XP content... You sir have earned a sub

[@LuganAki]

my favourite thing on XP is. "You have selected Microsoft Sam as your computers default voice"

[@tretraumusic7541]

Nice video bro

[@spaiduhz]

suggestion: invest in a ps/2 keyboard and mouse if you intend to work on more retro machines. and the weird text you see during installation is because the 4:3 video output is being stretched wide on your monitor. its usually a setting you can do on your monitor. if not, a cheap tiny period accurate 4:3 screen can be nice for when you want to try out retro games.

[@jamesbyrne5660]

I think you can change the resolution of SWBF2 in the main menu video options but not while in game.

[@Joe_Caruso]

I grew up on Windows 95 & XP, I've been using a VM for old games but now it looks like I'm gonna have to step up my game and build a nostalgic rig too!

[@diegotor5643]

I build my own extreme Windows xp build, for my other retro ( MSDos 6.22, win 3.1, win 95 and win98) i use PCEm v17 try it is really cool

[@njdarudedovich6126]

im so jealous of your game collection. I wish i could do this all day.

[@carltonleboss]

Nice stuff.

[@Sherbert_]

i would like to show appreciation for the astolfo figure in the background

[@alexbaerhold7239]

one hell of a gpu intro... the way i died 💀

[@daggerPall]

Recommendation : Try to build the fastest most supported XP PC (i7 4th gen, nvidia 900 series)

[@daggerPall]

Keep it official support btw

[@Ionic1k]

was the plan for another video.

[@TempoLOOKING]

With a SSD😊

[@CakePrincessCelestia]

@@TempoLOOKING Good old SandForce 2 thing like a Corsair Force GT! Still have some of those rocking, they were basically the first real good SSD and I had a 240GB model in 2013 after my WD Raptor X 150GB died.

[@FintanMoloney]

Thats a fantastic value for playing early / mid 2000 games.

[@Vampyroteuthis]

Dude this is so cool. I never got to use windows xp because my first ever pc used vista. This makes me want to try hunting down a xp machine.

[@terrabyteonetb1628]

That port splits to 2x dvi d ports (digital only. Special spliter

[@dalebenton3354]

Had a good gaming Computer years ago,When Windows XP Media Center Edition first got released,That was the best Windows XP I also had as well,Never crashed at all,It was also quick at loading up the internet,Quick for loading up games as well,Also used to do a lot of Computer building then as well

[@yyzttr6306]

The Precision I had was the a T5500 with Dual Xeons and a Nvidia Quadro 5000 card.

[@nororengo286]

That 0x0000007b error was because the Sata mode in the bios was set to Raid/AHCI. if you switched it back to IDE mode, it would have booted properly. tho reinstalling with raid/AHCI was a better choice anyway :).

[@SteveBrandon]

I have been tempted by Windows XP PCs at Value Village (which is the chain that became Savers but they still use the old branding here in Canada) since I have several CD-ROM/DVD-ROM games and applications that simply won't work past Windows XP but I'm always worried that any Value Village computer will be ridden by viruses that have disabled normal functioning in Windows and which I'd have to connect a laptop to disinfect.

[@tradito]

0:47 that's actually DVI. Just in the DMS-59 format.

[@sokoloft3]

You mentioning fraps brought me back. I got into PC gaming in 2009ish when vista was the main OS. I downgraded the laptop I had at the time to XP 64 bit and it was fantastic. Red orchestra, killing floor, all the source games I played ran so much better. Smoke particle affects though where a fps killer though for that laptop. Like the smoke grenades in day of defeat or smoke effects in gmod.

[@zacharyschwanke7160]

i used windows xp up intill 2018 then used windows 7 for the longest time, and just last month switched to windows 10. but will be swithing to mac tomrowo with an egpu running windows 7 in a vm with gpu passthrough.

[@Junkyard_Dawg]

You actually lowered your gaming performance by replacing the higher clocked Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600.

[@godieinafirenow]

If you want to change the resolution of battlefront you should be able to edit a txt in the install folder

[@laurensnieuwland4657]

Had the 490 server variety of this system. Nearly burnt down my house when the PSU went up in smoke.

[@kudziisuuASMR]

I would love to see you try out Windows 7 or Windows Vista- not exactly the most *retro* but still I think it would be cool and also i imagine you can run a lot more stuff

[@amnesiaonion2161]

Amazing figure

[@misterhoudi2824]

0:38 bro, that sudden swearing on the poor GPU made me laugh 😂😂😂

[@yourguysheppy]

Man, I need to go tech thrifting again

[@BladeRunner21577]

Windows XP can address upto 96Gb of RAM with PAE enabled. Each running instance can only use upto 4Gb of RAM but you can have many apps running each using upto 4Gb each. Back in 2006 this was the budget version of the cheap option that Dell offered.

[@ajstechlab]

that is really cool, i actually have gotten my hands on an old xp machine too, and have made a video about it on my channel. it hasa pentium 4, 1 gb ram, 150gb HHD, and no gpu. gta 3 runs fine, but i do not have more games for this system, but im enjoying gta3 while watching this video

[@sokoloft3]

Nice Tux icon. Seems like a great build. Have you BSEL modded the CPU? Its a slight overclock. You just need to tape over a couple contacts on the bottom side of the CPU. I tried to do the BSEL mod on a xps 410 I think. Dell has some self test or either that I did it wrong. It would not post. So your system might not post either. Worth a try tho.

[@tokarikure253]

playing halo ce on xp was the best

[@timothysloan5087]

"Hmm, I don't think my keyboard is working" :*Punches keyboard with slight increasing rage each time*... "Just a hunch." Fucking hilarious and entirely relatable. 4:26

[@CakePrincessCelestia]

Imagine getting WinXP in 2012 and using it until 2019. Wow! And I thought using a CRT until 2014 was weird, which I did. Never was able to justify paying hundreds of units of money for a worse image just to get wide screen and a slightly higher res, which is why I held onto my iiyama 22" for so long. Eventually, the electricity bill was the main deciding factor besides the thing showing that it has been aging for a while with the image quality slightly degrading over time. That CRT's wattage was all the way through the roof given its size. BTW you could also have run a repair install to get that preinstalled XP up and running again. That routine was pretty darn solid back in XP already.

[@tallpaul9475]

That GPU must have been what had the price jacked up. I had Q6600 back in the day with 4GB of RAM and AMD Radeon 5760s for far less money.

[@tri00azerath]

Get an old copy of starwars republic commando running on xp, that was peak gaming. If you dug through the games files they even gave you unreal editor buried in it to make your own maps and mods with. ❤ my childhood.

[@xXshinichiconanXx3]

My Windows XP Time: 2003 - 2009. RIP.

[@Seacat17]

You should try it on the older versions of Linux and on the modern versions of Windows and Linux!

[@JONMPG]

I miss windows XP it was around for a while before they decided to move on.

[@volvotech7404]

i have the newer model (Dell precision T3500) that has 24gb ddr3 ecc, Xeon W3530 and 500gb ssd + 2tb wd gold

[@dunny]

Hope you enjoyed seeing your CS skins on Windows XP, can't do that anymore after Valve shut down the CS:GO inventory servers recently. :( Bring back CS:GO Valve...

[@RodknockRhett]

I'd still be using XP if support never ended. I grew up with it.

[@nahventure3873]

AAAAH I got a P 390 in like 2014? It was a C2D 2.4GHz + 4GB (4x 1GB). No HDD but other than that it was fairly in tact. It was an upgrade for me back in the day, I had athlon x2's and a phenom laying around. I knew my dad had a dead system with a Q6600 so I took that CPU and upgraded my PC. Sucks the 390 didn't support higher FSB since those could be "upgraded" with a pin mod/tape. I swapped PSU and threw in a 7870 eventually and then upgraded that to a gtx660. I don't think I managed to get to 8GB of ram on that thing due to money, but I'm pretty sure I did hit 6GB of mixed ram. Good times. It was my first system with an SSD too! 120GB! hah, that was always full. I'm currently still a bit behind but way ahead. Running a 8700K + 3080ti in my main w/ 32GB. I have a 7900X + 64GB (microcenter combo) built, but it's at my dads house and I live 24 hours away (on plane) currently so I have to see how I can get that here.

[@bitemykrank1970]

I run XP on a Quad Core 6600 with a GT 610 and 4GB Ram, it runs Crysis perfectly, and Black and White has never looked so good.....old HP SFF machine, with a tiny 270w power supply in it.

[@ApertureLabs4194]

for half life 2, you can use the orange box to run hl2 without steam

[@LOLMAN9538]

Good choice getting the Q6600, that is the minimum CPU requirement for GTA V

[@ramiallan525]

How do you guys find the drivers for these graphics cards and what not?

[@waldfruchttee]

an dell xps 430 would also be great

[@tomtry3814]

ooh please i have a dell 990 with a i7 2600 4 gig of ram i run all my old games from win 98 and all my fs sims

[@hhero4841]

i grew up with windows XP, vista and wins7

[@creproductions102]

It actually looks really beefy

[@xGMV]

It boggles my mind how this only costs you 46 bucks. Where I'm from, I got a 500GB for a bit more, and it was used. A system like this here would cost thrice as much, plus shipping. :(

[@MrMarbles]

How could you use wxp till 2019?

[@ILikeBlackholes77]

Still better than my crappy laptop

[@AstrumOreo]

me watching this using this pc upto 2021

[@RudolfSikorsky]

Happens so, that I tend to use my Win XP machine more than my main rig. Probably because I am 52 years old and my favorite games are from this era. And I seriously dislike emulators.

[@FFFFFFFFFF493]

Just got a similar model for free. Dimension 9200. Swapping in a q6700, 4GB of RAM and a GTX960. Should be a fun XP machine.

[@stevenchristenson2428]

These old XP machines esp the dell ones are cheep as chips. No one is really doing retro xp stuff right now and were in the golden time when everything is cheep as dirt. This will change as years go by because the old socket 7 stuff was cheep as dirt years ago and then suddenly because people wanted to build retro machines got expensive. Sadly this was after many of the boards and compoents are now in landfills. I myself have 2 p4 and a quad duo laying around to mess around with XP and 98. All of my stuff I got for free and saved from ewaste.

[@FFFFFFFFFF493]

@@stevenchristenson2428 Super cool Steve.

[@TempoLOOKING]

​@@stevenchristenson2428phillscomputerlab

[@DareTruthor]

What monitor is that? The black level is on oled tier.

[@retroke6560]

damn, that pc could pull csgo off with 40fps and over while I'm now struggling to hit competitive fps on cs2 shit

[@XP_Nostalgia]

This thing is still powerful than my pc 😅

[@tangdynasty4735]

Throwing that GPU was personal 💀

[@JackDD]

> _I didn't upgrade to Windows XP until 2012, which is super late in its lifetime._ You what?

[@PrettyFlyForATyGuy]

Now throw in a dial up modem and get online!

[@sneff212]

core 2 quads and duos are 64 bit

[@outtheredude]

Just throw in an Audigy or X-Fi and you'll be in EAX heaven for ears. Also, maybe, a boot SSD. ;-) Using an 8GB GDDR2 1000 Core 2 Quad Q9650 Gigabyte EP35-DS3R 2GB GDDR5 EVGA GTX 750 Ti SB Audigy 0090 PCI based system triple booting between XP Pro 32-bit, 8.1 Pro 64-bit (with Classic Shell Start Menu) & Zorin OS 17.1 retro rebuild myself. (Also with SanDisk X400 128GB & 256GB boot SSDs, 1TB & 2TB WD Black Storage HDDs).

[@benferris2764]

Yeah i spotted that vsauce theme

[@tuff_lover]

Weird you didn't mention LGR. Why would you?

[@joedou7glas200]

Now this PC can play Half-Life 2 at 40fps instead of 15🥶🥶🥶

[@sirkyoj1]

Does it run crysis?

[@user-il2un4md3o]

gimme that

[@steampunkstar_raisin]

❤ #awesome

[@MidiCoreNya]

Only subbed cause of the Astolfo figure